Why Only Proletarian Revolution Can Liberate Women

Question: What is your Party's policy on women?

The Chairman Answers: Our Party's policy on women can be summarized in the
slogans: "WOMEN HOLD UP HALF THE SKY" and "BREAK THE CHAINS--UNLEASH THE
FURY OF WOMEN AS A MIGHTY FORCE FOR REVOLUTION!" These slogans and the policy they
express are grounded in the understanding that women have a tremendous contribution to
make--fully equal with that of men, in every respect--in revolutionizing society in every
sphere and bringing about a whole new realm of freedom for human beings as a whole.

The oppression of women, on the greatest scale and down to the most personal and
intimate detail, is an everyday fact of life under the present order. In personal-family
relations, and everywhere in society, women--even those of the propertied and financially
well-off classes--are continually subjected to insult, threats, abuse, degradation, and
brutality at the hands of men. They are virtually treated as property themselves--as
commodities to be bought and sold and to be used to sell other commodities. Male
supremacist domination and oppression of women is not only an everyday fact of life--it is
a foundation stone of capitalism and of all systems where one section of society dominates
and exploits others. And therefore it is woven into the fabric of society and the dominant
culture--in religious-based "traditional morality" as well as in the flagrant
sexual plunder of pornography and prostitution.

At the same time, in the U.S. and more generally throughout the world, the increasing
involvement of women in workforce and in many other spheres of social life, and the
growing resistance of masses of women to their "traditional" enslavement and to
the attacks on them, is coming more and more openly into conflict with the need of the
ruling classes to aggressively enforce this "traditional" enslavement and its
accompanying "traditional morality." This is a very explosive contradiction--a
potentially very powerful force for the most radical revolution in human history, proletarian
revolution.

The oppression of women did not always exist--for thousands of years, men and women
related to each other without domination and exploitation. The oppression of women first
arose when early communal society split up into different and antagonistic classes. This
happened not because of some unavoidable "flaw in human nature," but because
changes in production--in tools and technique--undermined the old communal way of carrying
out production (mainly gathering and hunting) and of sharing what was acquired in this
way. Private accumulation of wealth went along with the new forms of production, which
involved private ownership of the means of production (land, tools, and
even people taken as slaves). One group in society now monopolized control of the means of
production and dominated social life as a whole, forcing the others to labor for them.
And, bound up with this, the more or less "spontaneous" or "natural"
division of labor between women and men--where women took responsibility for the rearing
of children in their early years--was transformed into an oppressive relation.

The family so familiar in today's world (the "nuclear family") where the man
is the "Lord" of his household, with domination over his wife and children--this
emerged with the accumulation of wealth as private property. The man controlled this
property and insisted upon control over his wife, including her sexual and reproductive
activity, in order to see to it that this property was passed on to his children,
in particular his male children (and not someone else's). As Frederick Engels
pointed out, the word "family" itself is derived from the ancient Roman word, familia,
which referred to a household in which the man had the power of life and death over his
wife and children as well as his slaves.

In some recent writings on the question of Morality, I have called attention to the
fundamental point that, throughout the entire revolutionary process that aims to create
the conditions for communism, the struggle must be waged to continually, and ever more
thoroughly, overcome and uproot the relations of inequality and oppression that shackle
women; to promote personal, family, and sexual relations that are based on mutual love and
respect and equality between men and women; and to increasingly develop forms for the
masses of people to carry out-- through cooperative efforts involving men equally with
women--the functions which are now focused overwhelmingly in the family and which are a
burden on women in particular. Through this profound revolutionary process, the
"nuclear family" will be finally abolished and replaced by new forms of social
relations in communist society--a society based on conscious and voluntary cooperation
among people--without economic, political, and social domination and inequality.

Engels, in discussing the connection between the family and the accumulation of wealth
as private property in human historical development, also emphasized something even more
important and profound: While, in the past, changes in production undermined the basis for
a communal society and brought into being relations of exploitation and
oppression--including very centrally the oppression of women--humanity has now reached the
point where such exploitation and oppression is not only unnecessary but is a
definite hindrance to the all-around development of human beings and their
society. The only thing now holding back a great leap in this development is the
capitalist-imperialist system of exploitation that dominates the world and the continuing
oppressive relations bound up with this system and with the division of human society into
exploiting and exploited classes.

Humanity as a whole and its forces of production--including not only technology but,
most importantly, people and their knowledge and skills--have long since reached the point
where poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition and literal starvation could be completely
eliminated. Yet these things are still very widespread in the world, affecting the great
majority of the world's people. Humanity has reached the point where meeting the
all-around needs of the people, including the rearing of children and providing for future
generations, could be achieved through the cooperative efforts of all members of society,
women and men, with equality and in a way that continuously advances people's
understanding of and transformation of society and the world in the interests of humanity
as a whole. But the control and organization of humanity's forces of production, and of
political, cultural and intellectual life, by a small number of exploiters stands directly
in the way of all this.

That is why revolution, and nothing less than revolution, is needed and urgently called
for--a proletarian revolution--a revolution that, in achieving its final aim of
communism, will sweep away all class divisions and exploitation and all oppressive social
relations, including the shackling of women in "tradition's chains." And, at the
same time, the struggle to overturn and uproot the oppression of women will play a great
and central part in carrying out this proletarian revolution and bringing a communist
world into being.

Any other kind of struggle against the existing order, guided by any other class
outlook and interest, including religious-led movements, will sooner or later seek to
reinforce the chains binding women and, together with that, the chains binding the masses
of people as a whole.

Compare the experience of revolutionary China under Mao's leadership with the so-called
"Islamic revolution" in Iran or elsewhere: one of the things that stands out the
most is the profound, radical difference with regard to the role of women and the relation
of this to the character of society as a whole. In socialist China, where
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism was the guiding ideology, the slogan "Women Hold Up Half
the Sky" was popularized and made a rallying cry of struggle throughout society,
and historic advances were made in the battle to uproot the oppression of women; in Iran
today, and wherever religious fundamentalism is in leadership, women are openly treated as
inferior to men, as lesser beings requiring the "protection"--that is, the
domination--of men.

To put it in simple and basic terms: The liberation of the poor and exploited people of
the world is completely bound up with the liberation of women from every form of male
supremacist domination and oppression, and vice versa--you cannot have one without the
other.

Because they are constantly subjected to--and repeatedly rise up against--male
supremacist domination and oppression, and because they are half of humanity and half of
the world's exploited and oppressed people, women will indeed be a tremendously powerful
force for revolution--proletarian revolution. This will be true in the struggle
to overthrow the present system and in continuing the revolution after
the proletariat has seized power and set up its own rule in society. And, in turn, no
other force in the world, besides the revolutionary proletariat, has an interest in and
dares to fully take up the fight to abolish the oppression of women and to fully unleash
the fury of women as a revolutionary force. This is because no other class in society,
besides the proletariat, has nothing to protect in the present order and no interest in
preserving any of the oppressive relations that are bound up with the division of society
into classes.

Our Party's Programme states this very clearly: "as Lenin put it, a
measure of the thoroughness (and the success) of any revolution is the degree to which it
mobilizes and emancipates women." The fight against the oppression of women is a
crucial part of preparing the ground for and then carrying out the overthrow of the
present oppressive capitalist order. And our Programme goes on to emphasize that,
with the overthrow of this system and the establishment of socialism under the rule of the
proletariat, the struggle to uproot the oppression of women not only must continue and
will continue, but must become even more thoroughgoing and deep-going:

"[It] will not be confined to any one sphere, but will go on throughout all of
society. Revolution is impossible without the constant breaking with old ideas and old
institutions, and the practices and values which promote the oppression of women are a key
prop of the old; they must be a key target of the proletariat in destroying the old and
creating the new. In any sphere, from employment to literature and art, this question will
be raised and will be the source of ongoing struggle in order to ensure the full
participation of women in the socialist society and the ongoing proletarian revolution and
thereby immensely strengthen that revolution."

All this is the world-historical content and meaning of the Party's policy on women and
of the slogans: "Women Hold Up Half the Sky" and "Break the
Chains--Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!"